And by the way.... I would like to mention that the people who work at the IRS are dedicated and wonderful public servants who deserve our gratitude for all that they do....they are the best...thank you...you are great Americans!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bah. This is why God made proxies. Shouldn't even be slow for a site that's mostly text.

As to why you're getting this classification, I'm guessing one of two things happened:

Someone read your site and decided they didn't like what you wrote. They won't get anywhere by saying you wrote something they don't like, so they flagged Althouse as some kind of attack site.

Alternatively the service you're using for ads could have been serving up something that carried a virus. That happened to Ace awhile back. The ad providers are pretty good about screening that kind of stuff out, but they're not perfect.

Big organizations can't keep track of all the millions of web sites, so they farm out the black list. I'm guessing it isn't just the IRS - you've probably been black listed by Net Nanny or one of the other services.

They've really clamping the filters down recently due to real phishing and virus attacks on government systems, so it's "highly unlikely" to "not a chance in hell" that is has anything to do with you specifically.

Since as part of my business I sell network security products, let me assure you that no one in IRS IT has sat down and decided that YOU, Prof. Ann Althouse, run a fraudulent and/or phishing blog.

Whatever vendor provides their web content filtering product has somehow marked your blog as being unsuitable for work access. In what great cosmic on-line database of offending web sites yours lies marked as a pariah God only knows.

If I had to guess, in spite of the phishing/fraud warning, I suspect that your content, especially the comments, got you marked as not appropriate for work. It also could be that your site got falsely or maliciously reported as being a phising/fraud site to a web blacklisting service.

It's too bad, because I'm sure quite few IRS lawyers would love your site. I'd recommend to the IRS employee who notified you to ask IT to specifically white-list your site. You are, after all, a constitutional law scholar and apposite to their legal work.

The IRS 's answer to your question will be "Don't ask , and we won't tell". Some of your recent posts did point out Obama's inept style of leadership. That could have irritated Obama's thin skin if he reads the blog. It would figure that Obama's blog name would be America's Politico. Either that or Alpha liberal dropped a dime on you.

it wasn't ann. you know better. it is a website that marks visitors with cookies and that is forbidden on sensitive document computers and why would a government worker be permitted to surf blogs on company time and with company machinery.

My computer keeps asking me if I want to upgrade Flash, and I keep telling it no.

My general practice is: either upgrade it, or uninstall it. One of the big reasons for upgrades is to patch security holes. Keeping an old version installed can make you more vulnerable.

That's not true for every program and every upgrade, of course. Sometimes the new upgrade has bigger vulnerabilities. So if you've done your research and determined that your version of Flash is solid, then ignore me. I don't have time for that research, so the safe path for me is to get the upgrades.

The local auto shop has a computer; and I watched the guy bring it up when I brought my car in. Every single morning, he says No to Windows upgrades, because he's too busy. From what I could see, they hadn't upgraded in over two years. I made sure I paid in cash, because I didn't want to trust that machine with any of my account numbers.

@Martin - Yeah, I'm aware of your point. My concern is actually less about security (which is probably foolish on my part) and more about the obnoxiousness of the ads which seem to go up with new "capabilities".

GMay said... "The Professor lobs up this meatball and none of the lefty trolls take a swing in 26 posts?"

no swings needed meathead. in the late 1990s the IRS and all Treasury Dept workers (my wife was one of the later) had their computers firewalled against surfing where cookies were deposited and with the number of things that google does on each page view, it was no wonder.

What a revelation: The people who claim to know so much about tax policy and its evils don't even have a clue as to basic workplace expectations in not only most places of business and many government agencies, but in the IRS itself.

During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain’s online team has often used web video to get the candidate’s major campaign themes out onto the internet.

But an offhand verbal riposte by one of the members of that team has turned into a viral video that’s providing just the kind of attention they don’t want. It’s reviving the idea that the Republican presidential candidate is clueless when it comes to technology.

Speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York Monday, McCain deputy e-campaign director Mark Soohoo responded to a comment about McCain’s self-professed computer illiteracy by saying that McCain is "aware of the internet."

The comment, caught on video and uploaded to the web on Tuesday by Micah Sifry, one of the two organizers of the conference, quickly made the rounds on the web and on Twitter.

It eventually provided fodder for one of CNN’s regular off-beat stories done by its national correspondent Jeanne Moos, who took to the streets to conduct an unscientific survey of what Americans both young and old thought of McCain’s computer illiteracy.

Everyone but one person interviewed agreed that McCain should know how to use a computer.

One woman exclaimed: "Oh, that’s absolutely ridiculous."

Even Hu Jintao, China’s president, surfs the web.

To be fair, what this online branding obscures is the fact that McCain is probably more familiar with, and better versed than most of the roster of the 2008 presidential candidates on the nuances of telecommunications and internet policy because of his work as a longtime member and former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — work for which he has received frequent praise from consumer advocacy groups and think tanks.

So with all this in mind, take our poll.

Explain your vote in the comments section.

Does it matter if a president of the United States is computer illiterate?Yes 89%No 10%

HDHouse swung and missed: "no swings needed meathead. in the late 1990s the IRS and all Treasury Dept workers (my wife was one of the later) had their computers firewalled against surfing where cookies were deposited and with the number of things that google does on each page view, it was no wonder.

and meathead, i posted earlier to this effect."

Ritmo was the first and only lefty to swing at the meatball. You posted tech stuff twice, which any moron could figure out wasn't what I was talking about.

Who even knows or cares what GMaynot is talking about. Once his Blogger profile gets more than 254 views, and his blog has any actual posts, let alone any that are read widely enough to put him on BloggingHeads, then he can bitch and whine about being too out of touch to understand how the internet culture is impacted by policies in real workplaces used by real Americans!

Ritty floats this one out: "Actually, I love how removed one has to be from the people with whom she claims such solidarity to not realize how many workplaces restrict internet access period, and not just access to Blogger."

I love how shitty your reading comprehension has to be to miss the fact that the Professor clearly stated her blog wasn't always restricted there and, as Chip ahoy pointed out, what exactly set off the restriction.

Now I realize this thread has reached the '5 posts by Ritmo' rule for declaring a thread absolutely fucked beyond rescue, but come on dude, you're not usually this dense.

I love how shitty your reading comprehension has to be to miss the fact that the Professor clearly stated her blog wasn't always restricted there and, as Chip ahoy pointed out, what exactly set off the restriction.

A bad economy and greater focus on productivity than before? More stringent blocking policies on social networking sites? I've seen them block Blogger at two places that didn't previously.

You're just as out of touch as EBL, so shutting up is probably the best advice you could give yourself on this one as well, GMaynot.

My guess would be that they probably block the entire .blogspot domain. There may be some dodgy commercial sites that use Blogspot, since it is free, and they may have received complaints about some of them.

You should ask yourself if it's really I who kills a thread or the fact that it was so irredeemably off-base to begin with.

Sorry to rain on your groupthink parade but Blogger is now blocked at a lot of workplaces. Deal. Grow up. And get in touch with the American people whom you claim to speak for. This is their reality nowadays. You simply don't get that, do you?

My personal rule is when the discussion devolves in criticism of typos or ability to hyperlink using html, the cause is lost.

I am a lousy typist (made worse since I went to a netbook) and tend not to proof read a blog post--I also know how to hyperlink but generally find its faster for me to cut an paste it rather to use HTML. If either of those practices offend people, well, so be it.

This is a blog and not a journal or more scholarly publication. And those rely on editors to clean up my shortcomings.

You're right, Roger. It was a bit petty of me to get on Rialby's case about the improperly inserted hyperlink. I just thought it was a little droll given the focus of the thread on technology and its limitations.

And to the larger point: I find myself in agreement with those that say the employer has the right to restrict access to any but intranet sites or sites the employee can show are necesssary to conduct company business. (use listservs--they serve the same purpose and generally dont get filtered)

BTW Professor: what would be your legal remedy to have the IRS restore you blog so government employees could access on the kings shilling? As a conlaw guru I am sure you could come up with some grounds.

And to the larger point: I find myself in agreement with those that say the employer has the right to restrict access to any but intranet sites or sites the employee can show are necesssary to conduct company business.

It's getting harder and harder to do your job without free access to the web. I would be about half as productive.